The Reading in the Closet

Will Hindmarch is a freelance writer and designer. He also blogs at his home site, The Gist, and his game/story operation, Gameplaywright.net.

What’s happening here? This is Jeff VanderMeer perched and balanced above his audience during his reading in Manuel’s Tavern’s storage closet in Atlanta on Friday. Why have a reading in a bar? In the closet? Because at least it’s quiet.

Thanks to all who came out to the reading in Manuel’s on Friday. Thanks for following us into an unlikely venue and being great sports about it. One day we shall tell the others that you were there that day, for the readings on the closet ladder, atop the televisions, in the back room of an ATL bar. The others won’t understand, but that night wasn’t meant to be understood. It was meant for stories. So: Cheers.

About Jeff VanderMeer

Photo by Kyle Cassidy

Jeff VanderMeer has been named the 2016-2017 Trias Writer-in-Residence for Hobart-William Smith College. His most recent fiction is the NYT-bestselling Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance) from FSG, which won the Shirley Jackson Award. The trilogy also prompted the New Yorker to call the author “the weird Thoreau” and has been acquired by publishers in 28 other countries, with Paramount Pictures acquiring the movie rights. VanderMeer’s nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Atlantic.com, Vulture, Esquire.com, and the Los Angeles Times. He has taught at the Yale Writers’ Conference, lectured at MIT, Brown, and the Library of Congress, and serves as the co-director of Shared Worlds, a unique teen writing camp . His forthcoming novel from Farrar, Straus and Giroux is titled Borne. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife, the noted editor Ann VanderMeer. You can contact him at pressinfo at vandermeercreative.com. (Author photo by Kyle Cassidy.) More...